With the accelerating industrialization, urbanization process, and continuously upgrading of consumption structures, the CO 2 from combustion of coal, oil, natural gas, and other hydrocarbon fuels is unbelievably increased over the past decade. As an important carbon resource, CO 2 gained more and more attention because of its converting properties to lower hydrocarbon, such as methane, methanol, and formic acid. Among them, CO 2 methanation is considered to be an extremely efficient method due to its high CO 2 conversion and CH 4 selectivity. However, the CO 2 methanation process requires high reaction temperatures (300-400°C), which limits the theoretical yield of methane. Thus, it is desirable to find a new strategy for the efficient conversion of CO 2 to methane at relatively low reaction temperature, and the key issue is using the catalysts in the process. The advances in the noble metal catalysts, Ni-based catalysts, and Co-based catalysts, for catalytic hydrogenation CO 2 to methane are reviewed in this paper, and the effects of the supports and the addition of second metal on CO 2 methanation as well as the reaction mechanisms are focused.